Grounded
by keviana
Summary: Eric deals with being grounded post "Face of Obedience." No pairings.


Grounded

Summary: A short. Eric deals with being grounded post "Face of Obedience." No pairings.

Disclaimer: Just for fun. I do not own Eric Beale, nor do I wish to. Those people have their hands full.

* * *

Eric slapped his hand against his forehead. He finally knew the missing link that he had been trying to conjure up for the last two hours. He was annoyed that the answer had taken so long for him to find. But now that he had it, he knew that the rest of the team would be happy he'd found it.

He stood up from his computer terminal perch complete with two large screens for his web surfing pleasure. Er, work.

He grabbed his handheld computer and left Eagle's Nest to walk to the railing. He looked down at the agents that were congregating on the lower floor.

As he brought his hand to his mouth to whistle for their attention, he hesitated. There was something very, very bad associated with what he was about to do. Thinking for a few seconds, he stood there, ready to whistle.

He brought his hand down. He had such a bad feeling about whistling and he couldn't remember why.

"Good boy." Hetty's voice floated from behind him near the door of Eagle's Nest.

In an instant, like a lightning bolt, it hit Eric again. He was still grounded. He turned around to look at Hetty. She was wearing her navy suit today.

With that single affirmation, and her stabbing dark, glasses-rimmed eyes staring at him, Hetty had reminded him about her threat to behead him without killing him if he used anything other than his voice to call together the agents. The fear of some sort of fate worse than death washed over him again. He completely remembered now. He had twenty-three days left of being grounded. He really hoped to make it to the end without dying.

Eric pressed his lips together and he nodded once to her. She raised an eyebrow amusedly at him. He turned from looking at her to look back to the group he needed to summon.

He never had anything witty to call at them. It was always the basic things. That's why he liked his whistle. It was one of the nifty things that Hetty had taught him over the last year. He had loved it so much that he had begun to use it exclusively. And, now that he was grounded, he felt like he was dying using his voice every time he needed to call the agents up to Eagles Nest.

He decided on an appropriate context. He called down, "Ollie, Ollie, in-free."

When the agents looked up at him, he pointed to his handheld computer. "Kiddies, Hide-and-Seek is over."

Callen and Sam traded a look before moving. Kensi sat looking up at him for a bit longer. She was smiling. She called up to him, "I haven't played that game in forever."

"Me either." Eric called back. "I mean, until today." He waved the handheld computer once, indicating he meant Hide-and-Seek in the cyber world, not reality. He pushed off the railing and headed into Eagle's Nest, Callen and Sam right behind him, Kensi and Nate right behind them.

He did his job. Not thinking again about the grounding throughout the day until it was eight at night.

He was closing down his work-station and came across one of his frantic notes from grounded-day-three, reminding him to not whistle. He had posted those notes everywhere to help his chances of not being killed due to inability to follow orders.

Today had been close. He had nearly forgotten and charged right into whistling. Heck, his fingers had been against his mouth. And Hetty had been _right there._ It was a wonder she hadn't penalized him for getting that close.

Out of the sixty-one days of being grounded, he had survived thirty-eight days. He had done well. He was getting close to being free again. As long as he didn't slip up.

Eric left the note where it was. He then used the Sharpie on his desk to write another:

_VOICE ONLY!_

He stuck the reminder on the bottom of his upper workstation screen. He had been meticulous about keeping the notes from the view of the agents and the psychologist, even though he knew Nate would be cool if he found them and knew the story behind them; after today, though, he didn't care. He needed to make it to day sixty-one.

Gathering his messenger bag, Eric left Eagle's Nest.

Coming down the stairs, he saw that Callen had crashed on the couch and that Hetty had covered him. (Eric knew she regularly did that when she could get away with it, thanks to the internal video camera system that he archived every morning.) He was surprised that Callen was the only one around. If anyone else was in the building, they were being silent. Most of the lighting had been turned off or dimmed. He quietly stole past the couch area over to the locker wall. Today had been a bike day. He found his silver ten-speed right where he had left it next to the lockers.

Knowing that the clicking noise of the tires would wake the seasoned Senior Agent In Charge, he picked up his bike, shouldered it, and headed for the back door of NCIS Headquarters.

He managed to get outside without making much noise. The door had been greased recently, so it made virtually no noise, which helped.

Outside in the night air, which was slightly cool with a small breeze, Eric pulled his helmet out of his messenger bag. Donning it, he got on his bike and began his long trek home.

He didn't live far from the office. But since Dom's death, the entire office had started taking precautions, which meant alternating routes home. He had made himself a complex flowchart based upon the day of the month, the weather forecast, and the color that Hetty wore, combined one week in advance, that determined which route he took in the morning and at night. He had written the subroutine himself. Tonight's route would be one of his longest routes. The bike would be a blessing.

Taking off, Eric thought back to how Hetty had grounded him for giving Agent Callen information when he had known that Callen had been instructed to go straight to the hospital instead of working further on the case. Quite simply, the information he had shared with Callen had landed the Agent in a worse spot than he had ever imagined was possible. But that was the past. No one had blamed him, but he still felt partially responsible.

Once he wasn't grounded anymore, things would be back to normal, more or less. For him, anyway. Instead of the constant reminder of what he had done.

Eric's thoughts drifted to how shocked he was at getting grounded by Hetty. He hadn't expected anything for his misconduct other than a good verbal reaming. Her actions had surprised him. Her threat had been a real kicker. He shivered as he pedaled along. He hoped he didn't force her to behead him without killing him in the coming days. He wanted to be free of _those consequences_ if at all possible. How the heck did anyone come up with something as crazy-insane as that punishment, anyway? Only Hetty. Only her.

His thoughts of punishments caused his past to join in his reflection. His father. The sorest subject of his entire life. Nothing Eric ever did was good enough for Mr. Beale. He hadn't _ever_ been grounded by Dear Ol' Dad, either. No, Mr. Beale was an upstanding businessman. He favored hard labor or a good licking with a belt.

Until the day he moved out, Eric had loathed his father, a man with time for his business empire over his own son any day. His father had forced him to be "grown-up" far before it was time to be grown up.

Nate had told him that was why he favored being so immature at times. Nate had also explained that because Eric's father had pushed him away, it had caused Eric to have trouble with authority figures, usually being afraid of the way they made him feel, so much to where Eric would push back at the authority if he felt he was right. There was nothing wrong with his behavior, Nate had said many times.

"_You just haven't healed. One day, you will."_Nate's voice echoed in his mind.

Hetty had said that he had an authority issue. She also knew about his past. She never brought it up, but she knew about it.

The breeze ruffled Eric's hair as he neared his home.

A thought occurred to Eric: _What if Hetty was trying to help him heal in her own way?_

She always had dual meanings to anything that she did. Like her Latin posts each morning on his Facebook page. Whenever he deciphered the messages, they usually had profound meanings.

By pointing out his "authority issue," she might be trying to get him to deal with it.

Eric arrived at his home. Parking his bike in the small shed on the side, he quickly climbed the four stairs to his back door and let himself in. He turned off the security system, then reset it for the night.

He turned on his home's speaker system, blaring Linkin Park as loudly as he could without waking the neighbors. The music always helped to drown out his tired thoughts at the end of the day.

He ate, cleaned a bit, and readied for bed without thinking much else.

When he finally climbed into his king-sized water bed to pass out, his last thought was how logical Hetty really was. Even though he didn't like being grounded, he knew she had done it to, innocently enough, teach him a lesson. And maybe he could "heal" over this "authority issue."

Well, he had twenty-three days to find out. Time would tell.

...End...


End file.
